Personal Woes and Advice 3

[aspi]

You need to readjust your focus. Part of that means that if you can't ignore place/concept associations to that person, you need to focus on building new associations to those places. Have a restaurant where that person hurt you badly? Make it the place where you and some friends have coffee sunday mornings.

If you can't avoid them or disassociate the memories, you need to face them head on and make newer, stronger ones.

Thank you. This sounds good and I have, in part, been trying to do this, but I'm somewhat worried that it will have the opposite effect of creating an association between those people and the person I don't want to remember if I initiate a meeting at such a place for exactly this reason - since I am actively creating that association. I know it sounds weird but it feels weird, too.

The second problem is that I literally can't do this for a multitude of things such as street corners, common pieces of jewellery or certain gestures that are triggers for me. Part of the problem is the sheer number of triggers, most of which are completely mundane.

I'm also someone that can remember certain things in very good detail depending on the impact they had on my life, and can easily be held back by them in teh process. I understand you are having difficulties because I experience the same thing when something heavily emotionally happens to me. You let these memories impact your emotions, because you just can't disconnect them from your daily life. I'm still experiencing the backlash from something that happened 5 months ago, but when I look at what I gained in return because of my actions afterwards, I can only be glad it happened the way it did. However, I was fortunate enough that I could dissociate them from my daily life rather easily, they lived far away from me, I did not have any obligation involving them and I didn't have really good connections with other people surrounding them, so I could just say 'Goodbye for now' and be done with it.

You don't seem to be that fortunate and that makes the recovery process all the more difficult. I think that you really need to reassess rationally what happened, what you did closely afterwards, and any actions you did in repsonse to this event. Look for the things that had a more positive outcome.

Just to clarify this, I don't talk to that person and rarely to others which know both of us. They are in pretty much no way part of my life anymore, so this isn't a Problem of an actual connection to them that I have to deal with. It's mostly all in my head and I need to get it out or at least put it someplace where it doesn't bother me constantly.

My problem isn't that I remember the emotional parts vividly. It's that I remember the small, meaningless things that ultimately lead me back to the bad ones. For example, I have to walk past a spot every day where we split ways for the evening three years ago and I remember what we talked about. I remember what they said, what I said, why I said that, how I felt and their reaction. None of this was important in any way or had any deeper impact on either of our lives, but it's enough for me to remember how these thoughts and feelings became part of a greater whole and then of course how that eventually turned out. The same is true for certain words or phrases, concepts, places, peoples and even an entire language - all in all way to much to cut all of it out of my life.

It's kind of a "pink elephant" thing. Once I encounter such a trigger, my mind just goes there, even if I don't want it to. I know that this is normal to some extent, but the frequency is worrying and since I remember just too much of our relation, it's all connected and it all leads back to bad memories.

You know, I don't know you that well. Yet I feel very confident in telling you that you're wrong. The very fact that you're here asking for advice, examining yourself because of what happened and thinking about how you can move on are signs of growth. They show thoughtfulness and self-examination. I know you think that the experience has taken something from you, but it has given you other things. Better skills at evaluating people, at understanding yourself and what you want.

You're wrong and when you see that, you'll start healing the pain you're suffering.

I feel like you aren't entirely wrong but you're getting too far ahead. What I'm healing are superficial cuts and bruises, not the one thing that matters. Healing back to normal isn't something I can manage to be proud of for a number of reasons. I really don't want to go into detail on this, so let me put it in a metaphor.

Imagine someone who's had his leg torn off and who has to use crutches to limp along. He knows the leg is gone for good and he'll need a prosthesis and he has accepted that. Sure, some day he will get better and he'll probably be able to run again. Maybe even faster than before. But right now he needs to get to the prosthetist and each - darn - step - hurts - like - crazy. At this very moment, the man needs something to deal with the pain. To get to where he needs to go, because he knows that once he can get there he will get better. He knows he's on the right path and he's determined to get there, but the pain is holding him back and he needs to find a way to deal with it - because the less pain there is, the faster he can go.

I'm that man. I know where I have to go, I know how I can get better but I won't be able to, unless I get there. And if I have to waste this much energy on fighting ghosts it just takes forever - since that fight won't make me faster, but only slow me down, since the ghosts are literally dragging me in the opposite direction of where I have to go. The less of them there are, the better.